City of Misfortune
by Raindog Bride
Summary: After the fall of the Moon, Mille Seseau is on the mend after the attacks on the capital, and Neet is finally being rebuilt. Wink sets out to get her life back, as well as the respect of her peers. Gehrich? He's just out for revenge. A farce in many acts.
1. Chapter 1

**City of Misfortune**

**0.-0.-0**

_Or, __**The Hastily Edited Travelogues of a Malcontent Diplomat.**_

_Alternately_, _**A Lone Warrior's Quest for Revenge and Good Company In A Cold World.**_

_Being a tale of love, death, vengeance, and completion, in a world that's just been saved and still doesn't have the decency to act grateful about it. _

**0.-0.-0**

Wink had been steeling herself for this all morning, and while she was not in the least inclined to drink, she was still thinking back to the bottle of cooking sherry tucked behind the sugar canister in the kitchen and wishing that she'd poured it down her throat.

Being drunk for this meeting might not exactly help, but she'd heard from Luanna who'd heard from Miranda (who, she had on very good authority, was not at _all _familiar with the devil's brew and merely suffered from the occasional morning migraine) that teetering on the thin line between Tipsy and Very Drunk could often lead to sudden miracles of thought processes and negotiation.

Wink had settled for very strong coffee instead, which hadn't made her into a suave tactician by any means, but had merely made her much more wide awake, and more prone to sudden whiplash than her former self.

She had her back to the door and her increasingly sweaty hands tightly clenched before her when the footman stuck his head through and announced that all concerned had arrived, and would she please step in. The resulting attempt to jump out of her skin nearly broke a lamp.

The footman was very understanding, and also had reflexes like a cat, for he was belly-down on the carpet and catching it before it had a chance to chip a corner, and he was nice enough to pat her on the back once he had set it back on its pedestal. He even offered her a nip of his hipflask after a glance around or two, but sheer iron will kept Wink from snatching it out of his kid gloves and inhaling it. Instead, she smiled weakly and gave a curt shake of her head.

"It'll be fine, pet," he said gruffly, taking his mostly decorative pike in hand once more. He was one of the newer footmen who'd come in after the disaster, and while Luanna thought that he didn't have quite the correct attitude for a servant, Wink liked him well enough. She was so glad for the comfort that she was about to swear undying love for him right then and there, but she settled for flashing a quick, scattered smile as she clawed her bangs back into place and ducked through the door.

Her back went ramrod straight as she crossed the room, and her hands stopped fussing with her hair and snapped down to her sides almost as soon as her foot touched the carpet. She assumed a professional, vaguely pleasant expression as she reached the chair facing the throne, ducked a perfunctory curtsey, and sat down, heels crossed beneath her, hands folded neatly in her lap, chin raised and her eyes locked with a warmly maternal grey gaze

Theresa smiled, genuinely, and leaned forward in her throne, "Wink, it is so good to see you."

Wink's cool, businesslike demeanor cracked like cheap crystal, and she smiled despite herself. "Thank you, your majesty," she said.

"Setie said that you had left your bed weeks ago, and were taking up your work again," said Theresa. "You must have been terribly busy ever since, we've barely seen you."

It was to Theresa's credit that she was the only one besides herself that could give Wink even the mildest stab of guilt, but she didn't begrudge her for it. They were family. Admittedly, they were a strange family, with one cripple, one crybaby, one screaming fishwife, Wink, and a mother figure who wore state robes day in and day out, and who they had to call by her full title whenever they were in public. But Theresa did love them, even if affairs of state oftentimes kept their relationship professional at best, and she was, in many ways, still Wink's mother.

"But never mind me," said Theresa with one of her smiles, and it made Wink relax a little. "We have business to attend to, or so my secretary tells me," she finished, leaning forward in expectation.

_Oh God_, thought Wink_. She's going to wink. I know it. And she's going to be very _bad_ at it, and it will be horribly adorable and I am going to start laughing and _never stop_._

But thankfully, Theresa settled for sitting straighter in her chair and giving her full attention to Wink.

Wink cleared her throat, and reached down to the satchel she'd brought with her specifically for this presentation, and as she pulled out scroll after scroll, a servant appeared at her elbow to take them up to the Queen. Theresa pulled a pair of spectacles out of her sleeve as they came to her, and Wink felt a twinge as she saw yet another aspect of her Queen that had changed. She'd never needed reading glasses before.

"These are…. scouting reports," said the Queen at last. "And estimates from local businessmen, yes I recognize this name."

"Coleridge," said Wink. "And Wellspring. They both agreed to finance the project if we agree to a few small tariff details in the next Summit."

"They're _bribing_ you? I can hardly condone that, much less decide how the Summit will sway for them," said Theresa darkly. "And what project? I can't make head nor tails of this." She handed the scrolls back to the page and removed her glasses.

"I was getting to that, my lady," said Wink as she pulled out her notes. They crinkled just a little in her hands as she sucked in a deep breath, then began. "I've had detailed reports of the area surrounding the former village of Neet for the past six months. The incident with the dragon, and my journey to the South delayed my findings, but I've had ample time in the last few weeks to devise a budget, and make several contacts. I have several companies interested in having a hand in the operation, and I have it on very good opinion that many of the refugees from the attacks on both Mille Seseau and the southern sovereignties would be interested in moving north to help in the rebuilding efforts."

"Rebuilding efforts," said the Queen. "Surely you don't mean to-"

"And why not?" said Wink, charging forward with everything she had. It was entirely too late to turn back now, so she concentrated on sounding as confident as she could. "Neet used to be the most financially successful logging enterprise in the entire country, not to mention the fur and fish that came out of the land surrounding the lake. It's been eighteen years since the disaster, and it was a mistake for the Court then to decide to abandon the land."

The Queen stiffened, and Wink realized with horrible clarity that she'd just interrupted royalty _and _called it on a mistake, and decided that in her next life she would be reborn as an oyster in the deepest tide bed available so as to never risk it happening again.

She tried a different tact. "The Black Monster is dead," she said quietly. "Miranda confirmed as much. And even if It weren't, there's no risk for the Moon Child returning. We can't let that much land and wealth go to waste when we're strapped for resources as it is, and the construction would revitalize the economy in unbelievable ways."

_Jobs! _shouted an earnestly unhelpful corner of Wink's mind_. Fish! Lumber! Burly construction workers ready to stimulate the economy!_ _I HAVE CHARTS!_

"And who is heading this operation?" said Theresa, slipping into her royalty voice once more, the voice of a woman who had reigned Mille Seseau for over thirty years and was not in the least inclined to give freely. "Everyone suitable has their hands tied already rebuilding the city, I haven't anyone to spare."

Wink ignored the surprising amount of bile that rose at her words, and swallowed. Looked down at her hands for a second, and smoothed her notes.

"I will be," she said, looking up, her voice crisp. "I can leave within the month."

Silence fell in a curtain of shocked pin-drops.

"Oh, Wink," breathed Theresa, her face a wellspring of heartbroken concern, and every trace of Queenliness melted from her. "I had no idea you were so unhappy."

Wink's notes tore.

**0.-0.-0**

The spells that they had used to stop the bleeding and keep her upright wore out a half-mile from the battered gates of Deningrad, and Wink collapsed right in front of Theresa and the guardsmen like a sack of hammers.

She didn't remember the rest of the journey. She only remembered pausing for breath at the crest of a hill, the wad of bandages at her back feeling suddenly hot and wet, the wound throbbing. The captain of the guard had turned to say something to her, but even though he was only a short distance away from her, it sounded as if he were much farther. And then the world became wrapped in cotton and snow and her muscles stopped working. Theresa cried out something, a ragged, _Oh Soa, catch her! _but it didn't matter.

She had dreams, terrible shifting quicksand dreams, where she was clinging to Mr. Lloyd's armor and the coldness of it burned her, but she still hung on with all her might as blue-eyed wolves with teeth like swords ripped at her back. Mr. Lloyd's mouth would move, and she'd strain to hear it, but then a wave of pain would rise up and wrench her frozen fingers away from him.

They told her later that she'd nearly died, that the combination of fatigue, blood-loss, and infection had almost swept her away.

While she was recuperating in her bedroom while the re-construction of the castle carried on around her, Setie and Luanna kept her company, bringing her blankets and hot soup and books on Wingly mythology, just as they had when she was sick as a kid. Setie laughed at her, and said that Wink had talked in her sleep.

"Wink's in lo-o-o-ve," she giggled. Wink, who had never been in love, who had only ever had a mild crush on a castle clerk that had later been thrown in prison for misappropriating funds from the treasury, blushed up to the roots of her hair. Luanna only smiled mysteriously.

"Her heart feels very interesting right now," was the only thing that she would say.

Wink wouldn't dignify either of them with a response, and buried her head in her book and said loudly that she could feel another fainting spell coming on, so if they wouldn't _MIND_ leaving her to nap, she'd be very grateful.

They heard nothing from Miranda, or the other Dragoons for several weeks.

Repairs on the city and the Crystal Palace consumed her time for many days. The palace had been mutilated in the dragon attack, and repairing it meant that new raw crystal would have to be unearthed from the surrounding mountains. The expenses were enormous, and it was between checking them and organizing the work crews and materials that occupied much of her attention. Her sisters were upset at the responsibilities that Wink was taking on, but she reassured them that she could perform at least some of these tasks from her bed. Theresa gave her approval, and the others reluctantly backed down. It did not Do to go against the Queen.

Still, Setie would always appear at random moments to fluff her pillows and pour her fresh tea and cluck disapprovingly at the mound of paperwork by Wink's bedside. Wink bore it gracefully, but she knew that she had to be doing _something_ while she was regaining her strength- it was either that or go mad. And not the exciting kind of mad where you kill people with an axe. The kind of mad where you sit all day in a dark room with tea-tongs in your ears, wibbling fearfully at the patterns on the carpet. Organizing the number of workers to be assigned to the merchant's quarter kept her thinking of the outside world, and not about Mr….

Exactly. She kept herself busy so that she did not have to think about That.

But she did. All the time.

She had nightmares. They didn't have the same fever-edged intensity that she had experienced during her illness, but they were still terrible. Having her hands twisted behind her back and being leered at by men with _beards _of all things. Quivering in the face of a raving lunatic with shining wings on his back and a maelstrom of fire in his hands. Cowering in a doorway as the Palace exploded and something many-winged and enormous bathed the city in flame.

And sometimes she'd have the worst one of all- where she was just a little too late, where she just barely not fast enough, and a sword buried itself in his chest and ripped him open, and he'd fall and fall and fall. And it would happen over and over again until she woke herself up crying.

She missed Miranda.

She missed when the city was whole and nobody was terrified of attacks, or monsters, or ancient artifacts. She missed having tea in the sitting room with Setie and Luanna, and Miranda who only drank coffee, and only then with exactly three spoonfuls of sugar. She missed her bright, curtain-draped room in the upper wing that had been one of the first areas of the castle to be hit by the Dragon's wrath.

She missed having a mind that could cheerfully spend an entire day doing paperwork without the occasional flash of thought that this just wasn't _exciting_ enough.

She missed not having to miss men with silver hair and red eyes who made such careful, exact, _beautiful_ plans, only to have them fall apart at the last second as she stumbled in front of his deathblow.

It hurt, and she hated it.

And then one day, the Moon was gone.

No one saw it set. They all just woke up one morning and the Moon that Never Sets was just an empty hole in the sky.

The rumors trickled in from the streets from frightened, panicked people who had already faced so much destruction this year, and they were jumping at any shadow by now. They said that it meant the end of the world was here.

Setie, frazzled from doing most of the day-to-day work that was normally Wink's task, threw up her hands and shouted that she wished that it would hurry up and _end_ _already _so that she wouldn't have to talk to one more crabby old man about his taxes. And then she burst into tears when one of her stacks of paperwork slowly collapsed into the hearth before she could stop it.

And so it hadn't so much been the end of the world as the end of Setie's career as an auditor, and after that Theresa just said in her cool, kind way that they'd just… oh, _forget_ taxes this year. Until this business with the Moon was over.

Wink experimented with getting out of bed for the first time. She made a step and a half before her knees buckled and she fell, and the shock of pain when she hit the floor brought tears to her eyes. They found her in the small space between the wall and the bed, hands wrapped around her knees, brown eyes mulish and angry.

They helped her back into bed, clucking at how she cringed at the pull to the new red scar on her back, and told her to stay there until her _strength_ was back, poor dear. Then they brought her a plate of warm milk with bread in it.

Wink took one look at that soggy atrocity, recalled every single facet of Miranda's bull moose personality that she could remember, and demanded that someone bring her a steak, medium rare, damnit, or _heads were going to roll!_

Even though she gagged up every last chunk of it out her bedroom window later, she didn't regret a bite. And every day she walked a little bit more.

**0.-0.-0**

The scar was big and ugly and red, and would never go away.

She'd seen it, once. Nearer the beginning of her recovery, when she was in the bath and a maid was pragmatically going over her with a washcloth. Craning her neck around, Wink had seen it in the big mirror, like a big red pair of lips on her back, puffy and scarlet, and she couldn't look away.

The maid had seen her stare, and had recognized the beginning notes of panic in Wink's breathing, and had turned the mirror away without a word. She'd gone on washing Wink's hair and Wink had been too shocked to ask otherwise.

She knew that it wouldn't look as bad as that now, but the image stayed.

Wink could feel the stubborn stretch of scar tissue there whenever she leaned a certain way, and she learned carefully to not stress it overly much, or it blossomed into a hothouse rose blossom of pain that only ice and time could ease. And then the nightmares would only get worse.

_What a way to remember him by, _she thought wryly as she wandered about the frost-bitten gardens of the palace. She was wrapped in a cloak and her hands rested snugly in a fur muff. She didn't like it out here much, in the cold crunch of the winter, but the castle was crowded with work crews and rubble, and at least in the gardens it was quiet.

And then she remembered that she didn't want to remember him at _all_, thank you, because she had acted very silly and had only gotten in the way, and he was a…

A murdering spying treacherous bastard, so Miranda had said.

_And he never said he was coming back for you, either_, she chided herself. _So stop it_.

She walked on until she became too cold, and then climbed the stairs all the way back to her room, regardless of how many times she needed to stop for breath.

The days passed, and the scar hardened and melted into something that she barely noticed, could barely touch even if she strained her arms trying to reach back there, could only trace the merest inch of with her fingertips. She wore thick, soft woolens, delicate silks, and other fine materials, and reassured herself that her skin felt good.

The world didn't end.

And one day, stumbling down from the mountains the same way that Wink and Theresa had mere months ago, Miranda came home.

She was skinnier than a winter wolf, and the white fletching on her arrows was gray and greasy and ragged, not that she had many left. But when she walked into the front hall, she hauled a guard by the shirt collar down to her level and demanded to know _why he wasn't at the post she'd assigned him to?_ And then they all knew that she was fine.

Miranda ate like a horse that night, and didn't tell them anything about her journey until she had polished off half a cow and as much beer as she could fit in. Even then, all she could manage was, "Dart's dad's….an _asshole_," and then she fell asleep.

Wink told herself that it was all right, that she would find out the entire story in the morning, and that strangling Miranda while she was passed out in a plate of rolls did not fall under the grounds of Acceptable Behavior.

Besides.

She wouldn't allow herself to ask those questions that were struggling beneath the surface of her skin. _Is he all right did he make it out of the battle did he say anything about me what's he really like?_

It was stupid and girlish and only made her feel bad, so she stayed up late and burned the candles low trying to find something else to think about.

In the morning, Miranda _still_ wouldn't talk until she'd had something to eat, and then she spent the entire afternoon telling them of what had happened. She told them of the dead Wingly cities, of the Black Monster and the mysterious Moon Child, how Rose was eleven thousand years old and had been killing Shanas for nearly as long. She told them of Dart's possessed father, of the Wingly dictator Frahma, of the labyrinthine dreamland of the Moon that Never Sets, and of how they escaped from it as it burst into flames as blue and waxy as its surface. It actually didn't take that long. Miranda had a habit of glossing over the details that bored her, and waxing eloquent on the details that annoyed her. A lot of them annoyed her.

And at the end, they all sat there, too stunned to say anything.

"Poor Rose," said Setie sadly, her blue cap in her hands. Wink remembered that Setie and Luanna both had traveled with the dark Dragoon. "And Dart's father, too."

"Hmph," said Miranda, hands curled around a mug of tea. They were all in Theresa's sitting room, gathered in the collection of soft chairs and tables in the corner. The Queen sat in her chair, a tall, regal looking plush throne of sorts that looked imposing unless you knew as they all did that the Queen kept chocolates under the cushions and three faintly smutty books shoved into the sides. "Brave, though. Can't tell you how many times I told that bitch to _die in a fire_, and what the hell, she up and does it."

There was a small moment of silence then, a minute of melancholy that absorbed all of them briefly. Wink hadn't known Rose well; hadn't known any of the Dragoons apart from Miranda, and the brief amount of time that Shana had spent at the castle, but she had wondered at the tall, dark woman with the sword at her hip and the gold in her armor. Rose had seemed like someone made of hard edges, with a blank, cold face and an aura of determination that jolted the bones. Wink had been afraid of her, but had envied her the gravitas that hung around her.

Her hands were being wrung in her lap, and she looked down and noticed them for the first time. There was a question that she wanted to ask very badly, but didn't entirely know how to phrase.

She forged on anyway. She asked in a small, neutral voice, "Did Mr. Lloyd….." she paused. Looked down. Unclenched her hands, then continued, embarrassed, "did he…."

Setie giggled, and jostled Luanna in the side with her elbow as she focused on Miranda. Theresa smiled and gave her attention as well.

Miranda sat frozen for a second. It wasn't a look that she was used to wearing. It made her look vulnerable. Then she told her. It didn't take that long.

And when she was finished, Wink nodded, and said, "All right."

Luanna's face turned and focused on her with her blind pearly eyes, oddly intent.

Wink smiled, "Won't you excuse me for a moment?" She rose slowly, an eternity of rising, and left the room in a whisper of skirts.

**0.-0.-0**

She didn't quite lock herself away in her room, weeping for weeks on end. She still emerged for meals and for her work and her daily walks, but for the most part, there were times when she wished that she could sit by herself in a dark place and not feel anything for a while.

She did cry. She didn't want to at first. When she got back to her chambers, she was so angry that she could scream, and she grabbed an inkwell off of her desk and hurled it into the fireplace, and the resulting splatters stained her carpet. But then she cried herself sick, and it hurt, because for all of this time, she had been waiting for Mr. Lloyd to come back (like an _idiot)_ and-

And what? She hadn't even had the nerve to imagine beyond that day. Marry her? Sweep her off of her feet and declare his love for her? Say, "I'm sorry for destroying your city and killing off a few friends and relatives of the people your sister knew, trying to take over the neighbors, and trying to annihilate the world," with a rose clenched in perfect teeth?

It had been a silly, girlish dream, but it had been her sweetest one, and so she mourned its death as well.

"_He was killed before we even started to fight,"_ Miranda had said. _"He was very brave, braver'n you'd think seeing as how he never fought anyone head-on unless he could help it.. He took on that fucker all on his own, before any of us dared to."_

The saddest thing was that Wink could picture this, every bored, deadly inch of him exuding enough arrogance and right to power to conquer the world. She could picture it up to the point where he failed- and she couldn't see that. Couldn't imagine it.

It was inconceivable to think of him as defeated.

Even when he had been- at Flanvel Tower, where Dart and Miranda and everyone else made a last stand, when he was weary enough to fall over, his legs failing underneath him, he didn't look like he had lost. Lloyd had looked like it was a mere temporary setback, and his lip curled with the promise that when he got his breath, he'd finish this once and for all.

So she did cry, and the weight of all of those hopes and dreams and the scraps of _confusionwondershivers _that she had allowed herself to feel bore down on her so hard that she thought that she'd never get up again.

But when the worried knock came at the door, (Setie, most likely, or Luanna if she'd been able to navigate the stairs) she pulled herself together and answered it with a dry face and a mild smile. She'd been stupid. She'd learned her lesson. She would move on.

Wink would find work that needed to be done, and she would do it- it was that simple.

**0.-0.-0**

_**Author's Note:**_

_Why Wink?_

_Why not? XD_

_I have only faintest idea where I'm going with this, but it doesn't matter. Gives me something to do when BHS's simmering, and I like Wink. And Gehrich. They accomplish so little, but they do it with such style._

_Also, this is set in the same universe as my other stories, Black Heart Stomp and Gather Up Our Bones in particular. It doesn't hurt to read them, but it's not necessary. But there's going to be Gehrich, and there's going to be Guaraha, eventually, and their situations are coming straight out of there. Guaraha in particular, the tool._


	2. Chapter 2

**City of Misfortune**

**0.-0.-0**

"You're _leaving?" _keened Setie when she heard the news, and she was so distraught that she dropped fish guts all over the floor.

The castle cats, who knew a good thing when they saw it, dove onto the mess like they hadn't eaten in six months, which Wink knew to be patently false, as they ate like kings ever since she and her sisters had instigated Kitchen Night. Each one was as tubby as an over-inflated football, but without the wind resistance.

Kitchen Night was what Setie had organized shortly after the disaster, and to which Wink had only recently begun to attend since her recovery. Simply put, a great deal of the former castle staff were dead from falling masonry or had had family who were, and therefore a few of their regular cooks weren't able to come in every day of the week. Setie had decided that as Sacred Sisters, they ought to help out in any way that they could, but because Luanna was blind, Wink had been half-dead from infection at the time, and Setie was afraid of overturning large rocks and finding corpses, they settled for cooking several nights a week for Theresa's table, and for the barracks mess hall. Once Wink felt well enough to take part, their dishes improved a little, as there was only so much that a blind girl and her enthusiastic seeing-eye human could do on their own. If there was one thing that Wink was good at, it was delegating.

Tonight, they were battering fish en masse for the downstairs guard, with a separate meal of a slightly higher caliber for the Queen and her retinue. They had Luanna in a corner far away from the crackling oil, de-scaling fish by the dozen. "It's like knitting!" Wink had said at the time as she guided Luanna into her chair. "Bloody, odd-smelling knitting. With eyeballs." Setie, who loved cooking, just _loved it_, was relegated to carting away fish guts and vegetable peelings and washing up pots because she could burn salad just by looking at it earnestly.

Wink was doing most of the cooking. She was resigned to this. She was the only one who knew how, and the only one who could do it well, so she was the one flipping the fish, sautéing the asparagus, and sending down dumbwaiter after dumbwaiter of perfectly crisp fish cutlets while the wine chilled in the butter cupboard. She was not, however, resigned to the fact that she had just stepped on a fish liver, and her potatoes were over-boiling.

"You can't leave!" said Setie again, as she wrung blood-caked hands, already near tears. "You're not _well _yet. You just got here, Miranda just got here! We need you too much. Luanna could fall down _stairs_."

"I admit that this is rather sudden," said Luanna quietly as she scaled and de-boned a fish so quick that she seemed like she'd been doing it for years instead of the last forty-five minutes. "Please don't take this the wrong way, but are you sure you've thought this through?"

"Neet is _cold!" _cried Setie, snatching up viscera from the floor right and left, her voice wobbling dangerously. "You'll catch pneumonia from some unwashed construction worker and die in a _hole_."

"_Thank you,_ Setie," said Wink. "I'll be sure to avoid that. And yes, I have thought this through. I've been sitting in a bed for the past seven weeks doing nothing but think this through, and I was very. Thorough." This last word came with a perhaps harder-than-she-intended poke at the still-undercooked potatoes.

"I wasn't suggesting that you didn't give it your all," said Luanna. "I was merely wondering if-"

"_YOU'LL BE POSSESSED BY LUANNA'S DEAD PARENTS!" _Setie sobbed, throwing down her handful of fish intestines and fleeing the room.

The cats descended.

After a pregnant pause, Luanna went back to scaling with brisk, sharp movements and a mulish look in her eye. "I swear, she's only jealous that mine died dramatically," she muttered. "Instead of in a carriage accident."

"Didn't Miranda win the Trauma Game years ago?" mused Wink as she yanked the dumbwaiter door open to deposit yet another load of dinner for the barracks.

"Oh, we're still playing. Setie says that she uncovered some suppressed memories, and she's been trying to one-up me all week. She won't win though, ever since I found out that she never had a cat, and it most definitely wasn't also tragically killed by the Black Monster," yawned Luanna, hands moving serenely.

"She's _suppressing_ things?" said Wink. "Good god, if she's been running on half reserves all this time, the girl deserves a medal."

"Miranda will win, in the end," said Luanna smugly. "Miranda always wins." She went quiet for a moment, and Wink allowed herself to hope that their discussion had moved on, but then she set down her scaling knife very delicately and said, "Wink, please. Tell me that you're not doing this because…. because of your accident."

Wink let out a long breath, and mopped her brow with the back of her sleeve. Her bangs were plastered to her forehead with sweat, but at least her braid was holding together. "I am not running away," she said finally. "I am going to Neet to aid in the reconstruction because this is my profession. This is what I have been trained to do. I am a _diplomat. _I go where the Queen tells me, I talk to who she needs words with, and I deal with the paperwork."

"But the Queen didn't ask you to do this," said Luanna slowly. "You came up with all of it by yourself."

"The Queen," said Wink, picking up the spatula once more, "hasn't trusted me to be able to fluff my own pillows ever since I got back." That wasn't bitterness in her voice. At least, there shouldn't have been.

"She's worried about you. We're all worried about you," said Luanna. "You won't talk to anyone, you're working all the time, even though Setie's right, and you should still be in bed at least part of the day, and because- look, just drain the potatoes and send the fish up already. I can smell the asparagus burning from here."

"God _damnit," _said Wink with great feeling, "I can never sauté things_!" _

"You're thin. It's only natural that you don't know how to work with butter. Now send it up, Theresa won't mind, and she's not wild about asparagus anyway," said Luanna matter-of-factly. "And take the pie out."

Kitchen night usually ended up like this, with side-dishes either unfinished or forgotten, and the Queen having to deal with something simple and not half as well-planned as she was used to. Setie was usually gone at least two-thirds of the way through in a haze of drama, and it was left to Wink and Luanna to send up the main course, take the dessert out of the oven, and stack the dirty dishes wherever there was room. When it was all over, Wink made them cocoa like she usually did, and they sat down together at the battered kitchen table, tired as dogs.

"I suppose we should go and check on her," said Wink as she cradled her mug and stared down at the dried-wax formation in front of her. _Do not pick, _she thought savagely, speaking as a person who had cured herself of thumb sucking, nail chewing, and talking in her sleep by sheer force of will._ Do not pick. Don't you dare pick. Nervous habits are Of The Devil_.

"Yes, we should," said Luanna, who took a sip of her own, and failed to move from her seat entirely.

Wink saw her fingers straying towards the wax, and saw no other alternative than to sit on them immediately. She cleared her throat. "I'm not running," she said. "Not… really. Not forever, anyway. I just need something to do to make myself useful for a while. Another assignment." She looked down at her cocoa, and her voice got small. "I just need to be somewhere else for a while, where people don't…." _Don't what? _she thought. _Expect anything of me? Tell me to go to bed all the time? Look at me sidelong for not grieving hard enough? _The old embarrassment flooded back, and she gripped her mug more tightly. "It's a career move," she said shortly. "And it just happened to come along now."

"I won't try to read you," said Luanna softly, her face turning to Wink's. "I know you don't want me too."

"Not especially, no," said Wink, sipping her cocoa.

Luanna's hands wrapped around her mug tightly for a moment, and she smiled suddenly, bright and heartbreaking. "I'm so glad that you have something so important to do," she said. "Neet's been a town of ghosts for too long."

Wink relaxed and covered Luanna's hand in her own, the equivalent of a smile. "Thank you," she said, and meant it.

Setie poked her head in through the kitchen door. "I just wanted you to know," she said loftily, and with only the slightest quiver in her voice "that I just remembered the time when my parents _died_. Very _tragically_. When I was six."

Wink raised her hand without looking over, "I was four," she stated calmly

Luanna raised hers as well, "Mine burned to death in front of me."

"…_AND THEY PROBABLY DESERVED IT!" _shrieked Setie, and slammed the door.

**0.-0.-0**

Her room was small.

It was a tower room, one of the few that hadn't been destroyed in the coming of the dragon. Small, but cozy, she'd thought when she was younger, that fit every part of her small life as best it could. There was a closet full of clothes she'd worn her entire life, bookshelves full of books she'd collected since she'd first begun to read, and shelf after shelf of any number of small things that she'd collected over the years.

The captain in charge of the guard caravan that would bear her through the Evergreen Forest had told her that there was room enough in her wagon for four chests-full of her things, enough to last her the months that it would take to get the Neet operation fully underway.

Wink had spent the morning packing, and everything that she felt she needed fit into three small bags. She felt absurdly cheated.

Six months abroad in Tiberoa, and seven weeks of fever and pain in this room had darkened its appeal for her. It had never been small for her before; a clerk in the Office of Trade had no need for anything bigger. The bed was a four-poster, the fireplace modestly sized, and the bookcases reached to the ceiling; she'd never wanted for space before.

Now she felt that if she made one wrong move, she'd have one elbow out the window with her head wedged up the chimney, and she couldn't look at the bed without thinking of being fever-mad and terrified as they held her down and tried to keep her from thrashing herself to bits. _Battering herself to death, like a moth against a lamp._

She supposed that she ought to have packed the new things they'd bought her when she'd recovered, the white doe-skin boots with the buttons up the side, or the dress of green lawn with the scooped neckline. Things she would have loved before she had left. But when it came down to it, she chose only variations of what she was wearing now; a maroon wool skirt that came down to her ankles, over thick stocking and the same battered, ruthless boots she'd worn during her time abroad. Her jacket was old as well, but in excellent condition, with as many pockets as she could find room to sew on. Her hair was pulled back from her face and swung down to her waist in a thick braid, the better to keep out of her way.

In other words, she was dressed exactly as she had when she had returned, and much to the dismay of her sisters, she hadn't shown any signs of going back to soft shoes and beautiful dresses. Much to her own dismay.

_I loved this room, _she thought, looking around. She was standing awkwardly in the middle, smoothing her skirt with tense fingers. _I fit here, and everyone liked me for it. I had a happy life_.

She was a too-large, gawky stranger in her own home now, and it made her scar twinge.

The reassurance that she'd felt the night before had faded slowly, and she was no longer at all convinced that her sisters thought that she was doing the right thing. Luanna had hinted that she might, but only that it was a good thing that she was doing, not that Wink herself was qualified to do it. That rankled.

A knock at the door, an inelegant rat-tat that made her turn around sharply and see Miranda standing there, Setie holding Luanna's elbow behind her.

"Heard you were leaving," said Miranda. "Thought we'd see you off." Her eyebrows were smooth gold lines so pale that they hardly showed at all against the wind-burned surface of her face. The right was notched in the middle, Wink noticed, a jagged punctuation mark from some barely-avoided blow. _That wasn't there before she left_, she remembered dimly, and then looked closer. Miranda had always been built more-or-less along the lines of a bowstring, even when they were children, but now she looked like a long line of gristle; too tough to chew, and too big to swallow, but whatever had tried had died choking.

"I have an hour or so before my retinue departs," said Wink, coming back to herself quickly. "Please," she added, stepping back to cover up the gracelessness, "Sit, I have tea ready."

"Wink, please don't be offended," said Setie cautiously, eying Wink head-to-foot as she guided Luanna into a chair by the fireplace. "But, well, you look a little…. conservative."

"She looks all right," said Miranda dismissively as she sank into an armchair and crossed her legs. One hand dangled off of her kneecap, all large knuckles and nails bitten to the quick, with calluses sticking out like proud pockmarks. "She's making a cross-country hike, not going out." Her cornflower gaze swept over Wink's ensemble in turn. "But a skirt's pushing it a bit," she admitted. "Show some ankle once in a while."

"I think she looks fine," said Luanna.

After a long pause, Setie fidgeted and said, "How long will the trip last?"

"The captain says that in three days we'll reach the encampment where the workers have been setting up, and they'll have an office ready for me by then," replied Wink, relieved to shift the conversation to something else. "I'll stay for a few months, overseeing the construction and sending reports back to the capital. By next summer, I'll have a replacement trained, and return to make a formal presentation to the Queen and the Summit on the results of our labor."

Miranda snorted. "Piece of cake. You were always in for that sort of thing. Pushing papers around and talking to people. Shocked us all when Theresa sent you off to the desert to talk to Uncle Zig."

Wink looked down for a moment, and composed herself. Miranda's contempt wasn't personal; it never was. It had all started when Wink had gone with her to the practice yards once or twice when they were children, and Miranda had been trying her hardest to learn to maim people. It had not gone well, but it had made her a few friends among the guards. They liked having someone soft-spoken and delicate around to apologize profusely if they got hurt, as well as fetch them cold cloths and pots of tea, instead of screeching at them incessantly and threatening to have their fields salted and their houses burned.

They'd gone their separate ways ever since. Miranda had made it clear in the past that she didn't think much of paperwork, to be honest, and while she didn't hold it against Wink that she wasn't anything more than a deified secretary, she didn't admire her for it either.

It had always annoyed Wink.

"You thought I couldn't handle it," said Wink quietly as she picked up her tea, her tone neutral.

Miranda's eyes narrowed and her head snaked around to get a better look at her. "Didn't say that," she said, and there was an edge of tooth in it.

"We were merely all surprised that you agreed to go," said Luanna in her soft, reasonable voice. "As you've surprised us this time."

"Fuckin' bag of tricks, aren't you?" said Miranda, still nettled.

"Miranda-" said Setie, her brows drawn up and tense, and her voice uneasy, "You-"

"I'm sorry, Miranda," said Wink with a small smile that hopefully didn't show how hard around it edges it was. "I hope that my leaving hasn't detracted from your homecoming too very much. I tried my best not to attract too much attention."

This was always the worst way to approach Miranda. She wasn't built to defend herself verbally; it wasn't that she was stupid, it was just that she loathed the kind of person who would rely on verbiage to hurt someone. Nothing was more certain to send her into a rage than someone who wouldn't deign to settle it with swords. Words were cowardly.

_I'm being nasty! _Wink realized suddenly. _Is this what it feels like? My goodness, how exciting. I do believe next I shall kick a puppy._

Miranda's chair fell over as she shot to her feet, her eyes were slitty-mean, and Wink suddenly remembered what Miranda tended to do to people who snipped at her. She hit them. A lot.

Wink set her teacup down very carefully.

"Miranda," said Luanna pleasantly. "You can't hit Wink."

"You don't know that," growled Miranda, not looking away from Wink's face, eyes like cracked ice. "I bet I could."

"Really, really not."

"Fine," said Miranda, tossing her hair back over her shoulder and giving Wink one long once-over. _I could do it, _said the look. _And no one would stop me_. "Bye," she said crisply, "Don't get killed." With one last show of teeth, she left, while Setie quietly hyperventilated in the corner.

"Wink, I say this as both a friend, and an advisor," said Luanna once she'd gone and the air had magically returned to the room. "That wasn't very nice. Or particularly smart."

"I would like to believe that she wouldn't actually strike me," replied Wink, picking up her cup once more with a steady hand. "Theresa would likely have a word with her in that event. A long one."

"She's gone, Setie, goodness. Here, have some cake," said Luanna, fumbling around until she could hand Setie a plate. "Breathing. It's good for you."

"I know she loves me, and that she would never hurt me," gasped Setie. "But one day you're not going to be able to find my body and _you'll all know who did it."_

"And you're in a mood," continued Luanna, addressing Wink this time with uncharacteristic sharpness. "Picking at her like that. She saved the world."

"I heard. Do you have any idea how angry the Bishop is at her at the moment? She destroyed the Divine Tree. The Moon fell. As far as most people are concerned, God is dead," replied Wink somewhat defensively, fingers curling around her cup.

"And you were rude. How does that help?" said Luanna.

"…You heard her," said Wink quietly. "She didn't believe I could do it then, and she doesn't now."

"We don't know _what_ to believe, you're acting so strangely," said Luanna harshly. "You said that you weren't running away, but look at you!"

"I'm very sorry," said Wink, bright and too quick, smoothing her skirts, "but I do believe it's time for me to go."

"_Case in point!" _snapped Luanna, hands curled into fists.

Wink took in a deep breath, then looked down in confusion. Her hands were shaking. She was unfamiliar with being this phenomenally _angry_.

She stilled her hands, and took in one hot, quick breath to unleash what likely would have been the most eloquently vicious speech of her entire life, when the plumed, helmeted head of one of the castle knights poked his head in and said, "Miss Wink, the Captain sent me here to see if-"

He flinched as Wink's eye landed on him like the blazing end of a branding iron, and his sweating, honest face went pale, "I… I'll just tell him that you're on your way, shall I? Yes. That. Shall do. By your leave, Miss," and left. Quickly.

"…G'bye Jeffrey," said Setie in a quiet, miserable voice as she mindlessly ate cake.

Wink exhaled slowly, and felt a weight come down on her shoulders once more. She felt the urge to swipe at dry eyes, resisted, then leaned down to collect her bags. "I have to go," she said again, uselessly. "Tell Miranda I'm sorry, I didn't mean to speak to her like that, especially after what she's been through." The largest went over her back, and she went ramrod-straight as the load hit a tender point in her scar, right between her shoulder blades. Wink picked up the other two, and shook her bangs out of her eyes, "I'll send letters," she said.

Luanna said nothing, her mouth a hard line.

She didn't move until Wink walked by her, and her wrist shot out like a snake striking to land on Wink's wrist and clamp down hard. Wink stiffened, stumbled, and dropped a bag as she felt something like the echo of a cannon shot resound through every vein.

She was all the way on the other side of the room and about to claw her way up the bookshelves before she realized that Luanna had let go and was now sagging in her chair, eyes closed. Wink swallowed hard, and held her wrist to her chest.

Neither of them said anything. Setie remained mercifully silent.

When Luanna's voice came, it was as soft as falling ash. "I suppose you'd better find the Captain so that he can begin getting underway."

When the door finally slammed home, Luanna flinched.

She groped for Setie's hand until she found it, then held onto it hard.

"Did you do the right thing?" said Setie timidly. "I don't think she likes you now."

Luanna sighed, and opened her eyes. She seemed smaller, like she'd curled inward sometime in the last few seconds. "I don't know," she said smoothly. "I doubt you're wrong."

**0.-0.-0**


	3. Chapter 3

**City of Misfortune**

**0.-0.-0**

At that very moment, ensconced in the Chamber of the Sun, surrounded by all the heads of state and important officials, Princess Lisa of Tiberoa was undergoing the first coming-of-age ritual held without the Moon Daggers for the first time in as long as any could remember.

Everyone was a little disappointed about that last fact, to be honest, since seeing the heir to the throne brandishing a pair of wickedly sharp knives tended to cement her image in people's minds in a very big way, but since as the Moon Daggers had never been rightfully returned to the throne after their shocking theft, the crown was left with little options. Princess Lisa was instead being handed a brand new royal scepter, to the mixed feelings of all.

Gehrich personally didn't give a shit, since he was out standing in the courtyard just beyond the palace walls with approximately six hundred other Tiberoans while the sun beat down with all the enthusiasm of an active volcano. He'd never seen the appeal of the Daggers in the first place, and at this point, he was just hoping that the scepter would take less time to hand over.

His eye caught movement coming from behind him, and reflexively, he snapped his eyes over to check. The gang of kids in the alley just behind Gehrich was messing around with cheap frost magics- crushing the tiny wax capsules in their teeth and collapsing into giggles as they found themselves sucking on eye-ball sized chunks of ice within seconds. The ones who got bored with that amused themselves by hucking them into the tightly packed crowd. The magics themselves sold for a penny a handful at any of the stalls around here, but the more powerful versions were reserved mainly for the military. Gehrich didn't think much of bought magic, but they were decent enough kid's toys.

He wasn't in any danger of being spotted at the moment; he'd made sure to keep his head down and his appearance as changed as possible, and even with the level of notoriety he'd received in the past couple of months, not too many people could connect a face to his name. The heat made him uncomfortable, but he'd been living out here in the desert for years now, and he could bear it. Gehrich might have been putting himself through no small amount of trouble for this whole stupid occasion, but he figured it was worth it.

He liked Lisa. More than her sister anyway. He figured that was rich, coming from him, but he thought that she belonged here more than Emile did. Er, _had_, really, now that Emile had married into Serdian royalty. Beautiful older princesses don't tend to stay at home looking after things, and Emile had never been anything other than beautiful.

He liked Lisa, because she wasn't the pretty sister, because she wasn't the one who was meant to give big speeches at the end of the day to make everyone feel good. He liked that she'd stayed home and taken care of the house during that whole shitstorm he'd stirred up, and he liked that she was the one to move behind everyone's backs to free her sister. Word was that she'd faced down some of his men by herself, relying only on status and stiff upper lip. He liked that. Royalty had to be sneaky, and it had to be haughty enough to get things done.

The word also was that she had a major thing for the botanical freak in the market district, which didn't hurt Gehrich's opinion of her either. Emile had fallen for a _King_, almost as unattainable of a target as you could get. Lisa, on the other hand, went for the grimy-fingered botanist who everybody knew as a decent enough fellow, once you could get him to stop talking about plants. _(He's from Donau, _everyone said. _He just isn't used to the desert.) _She was a Tiberoan girl, through and through. Took care of the home, protected it with her life, and chose her targets carefully. Once Zior had finally skipped off the mortal coil (_Sooner rather than later, _thought Gehrich, _the fat fuck)_, she would make an excellent queen.

The crowd went quiet, suddenly, and then erupted as the trumpets _bla-a-ated_ triumphantly as Lisa, followed closely by her retinue, and bearing her new scepter without a trace of self-consciousness, descended into the roped-off courtyard.

He cracked a grin at all the noise, even as he reflexively pulled down his hood. It seemed he wasn't alone in his opinion. They'd loved Emile, sure. But she'd left, and Lisa had always struck them as more… _something_, than her older sister. More susceptible to the crusty wiles of gardeners, certainly, which boosted everyone's ego no small amount.

She came to a halt in the center of the roped-off enclosure, a shy smile on her face as she held her scepter held gracefully as a bouquet of flowers in her white-gloved hands. She wasn't beautiful, not really. She stood too nervously under the regard of the crowd, and she was built like a bundle of sticks. She didn't have that luminous quality of her sister, or her stature, either, but she was pretty enough in her own way, and they all loved her for it.

It wasn't that he regretted what he'd put her through, because Gehrich wasn't prone to much in the way of regret. Not that he didn't have his share of regrets, but his were never things that he could make up in this way, much less spoken of.

He didn't feel guilty about putting her throne in jeopardy, or about making her live with _Lenus_ for six months. (She'd spent three days at the hideout. Three. By the end of it, they were out of food, his ears wouldn't stop ringing, and six of his men were dead.) He wasn't here because he felt _bad_ about this woman.

He'd searched Fletz, and earlier, Donau. The men he was looking for had moved on.

He would find them, and kill them, and everything in his world would go back to normal.

**0.-0.-0**

Six months ago, Gehrich would have told you that he hadn't really pictured himself dying this way- with his ribs crushed all to hell, and him choking on the dust. But, then again, nothing in these last six months had gone quite as he'd pictured it, so by this point, he was just taking things as they came.

Haschel dropped him unceremoniously on the ground, and Gehrich vomited blood. Choked it up, like he'd been drinking something when all of a sudden someone had told a really foul joke. _Heh, I ought to work 'punchline' into there somewhere, _he thought distantly. _S'fuckin' riot._

"Tell me," he said, blood and bile dripping off his chin when he finally got himself under control, "you ever heard of a thing called _disproportionate response?"_

"You saved me," said Haschel flatly, ignoring him. "You didn't have to, but you warned me in an effort to save my life, and that is why you are not dead yet." He'd gone into his teaching voice, dropping his contractions and harshing up his words like he'd always thought he had to.

Gehrich cringed inwardly, even as the broken ends of his ribs ground against each other, causing starbursts of violently black light to explode in front of his eyes. One of his hands was broken- limp and useless where the blunt head of a hammer had met it. There was nothing he wished he could take back more than that ill-advised _Master_ comment. For ten years he hadn't been allowed to call the man by his actual name, and he'd _meant nothing by it_. "Dead pretty quick, though," he grunted, trying to prop himself up against a rock as his pallor went increasingly grey. "You want to ask me something, is that it?"

Haschel went still, his face guarded. Gehrich cackled like a drowning hyena.

The old man moved faster than he'd given him credit for, even after the fight. One minute Gehrich was trying to catch his breath while simultaneously laughing his head off, the next, he was pinned against the rock by his neck, his injuries screaming as Haschel bore down on him. "_Quiet," _he hissed. "Or I'll split your head open right here and forget my obligation to you."

Gehrich snorted once, but not entirely mockingly. Something was wrong with one of his lungs. It hurt, yeah, but it was a bubbly, wet kind of hurt, and he couldn't draw in enough breath and he realized that this wasn't him dying _slowly, _this was him dying rather frighteningly quickly. Haschel seemed to realize it too, and when he cursed, it was an Islands word that Gehrich hadn't heard in twenty-five years at least and it almost reassured him.

What was less reassuring was the inexorable darkening of his vision and the overall feeling that whatever the old man had wanted him to say was going to go unsaid after all, and he thought very faintly- _Claire, wherever you are, I pissed off your dad with my last dying breath, and I can hear you laughing about it._

Things got awful black after that.

When he came to, he was not only not-dead, but he was also almost able to draw in a decent breath. Haschel had already torn up his old sleeveless shirt to bind his ribs with. His mouth tasted tacky, like vomit and potion, and his skin, oddly, seemed like it was buzzing.

_Fogs_, he thought fuzzily. _Dunno where he was keeping them, but he used them all up on me, I figure. _He felt unbearably smug all of a sudden.

Haschel caught him looking, and tied off his last knot with a painful jerk. Gehrich went from smug to coughing in a hurry as the old man glared.

The coughing was a mistake. Haschel cursed again, and held a waterskin to his lips until Gehrich could breathe normally.

He'd coughed up blood, but Haschel didn't look worried. Chances were that he'd gotten the hole in his lung plugged up, and his ribs felt like they were more or less back in place. He was glad he'd been out for that.

"So," he said, one arm looped around his midsection as if he could hold his ribs against another coughing fit. "Fire away, old man."

Haschel regarded him, his black eyes glittering. "Are you familiar with a man named Lloyd?" he said shortly.

"Never heard of him," said Gehrich. His voice grew a leering note."Old boyfriend?"

"And what you said about the Princess Emile in the castle being a fake, is that true?"

Gehrich bared his large teeth in a blood-encrusted smile, "True as silver. And lemme tell you, the bitch I got in her place? You don't want to fuck with her."

_Lenus can't be intimidated_, he thought, _and that might save her, but still, it's seven on one. _

He almost worried about her. The vicious cunt.

Haschel snorted, "We'll see about that."

_He's a monster_, thought Gehrich, going hollow suddenly. _Him and all his friends_. _The wings and shit- he never had those before_. He regarded him carefully, as if at any moment that violet glow could come howling back and turn his old teacher into a draconic nightmare again.

He'd never stood a chance.

It had been just him and that brave, twisted fuck Mappi against seven fully-armed fighters in close quarters. Mappi went down spitting with one move from the dead-eyed woman in black, while Gehrich had gone down with a chestful of broken ribs and purple-hot current still sparking through his fingertips.

He'd cheated. He'd gone for his knife when he'd been _trained_ to go at a man with only his bare hands, and the gods had frowned on that. The tiny girl with the white-Lenus hair hiked up behind her head had struck it out of his hand before he could bring it to bear, and when he'd stumbled back gasping _fuck fuck my fucking _hand_, _that's when the _King _of motherfucking _Basil _tried to swipe his head off.

Mappi had tackled him before he could hit home. Wrapped his skinny arms around the king's waist and bore him to the ground with a hoarse scream. Drawn his fist up, steel claws glittering on his knuckles, and that's when the woman in black had skewered him. The king lay panting weakly on the ground, the woman's narrow blade barely missing his side as it bit _through_ Mappi and into the flagstones.

Mappi had writhed around the sword, like an insect pinned to a card, his ruined, pigskin face screwed up in regret. Then she'd pulled out. Spattered the king's face and chest in cheery, holiday-colored blood, and he'd coughed at the red taste of it.

And while Gehrich had stood and stared stupidly at the corpse of one of his last allies, his broken hand throbbing wetly, Haschel had clutched something the color of a pregnant thunderhead in one gnarled fist, and exploded into light.

After that, things had gone by quickly. By himself, with a ruined hand, Gehrich hadn't made much of himself.

His skin was still buzzing, but most of the pain had stopped. He looked down at his hand, and frowned after a moment.

Haschel's voice grew less harsh. "You'll be lucky if you can use that hand in combat again."

Gehrich grimaced "Be lucky if I can make a _fist_, you old fuck."

Haschel hit him. No nonsense. Open palmed, straight on the long plane of Gehrich's cheek. Gehrich's head rocketed back from the blow, biting his tongue as he suddenly remembered vividly what kind of a teacher this man was.

Haschel glowered at him while he got himself back under control. Gehrich gave up, and the sourness creeped into his voice. "Anything else you wanna know before you cut me loose for the wild dogs to fight over?" he drawled, rubbing his face with his good hand.

The older man grunted. "One thing more. Then you can disappear off the face of the continent." He ignored Gehrich's eyes rolling hugely

. "Cough it up," said Gehrich. "Then again, since I ain't dying, you've got all the time in the world."

Haschel seemed almost to hesitate, like he didn't trust himself to say it.

"My daughter," said Haschel finally.

**0.-0.-0**

It took him three days just to make it down the mountain.

It took him two weeks to make it through the cursed valley (or maybe three? It was so fucking hard to _tell _in that stupid place.)

It took him one week to make it through the Barrens and arrive in Fletz.

When he got there, he found the house of one of his lieutenants, ordered a bath and a meal as confidently and in-command as he could manage, and just barely managed to shave before he passed out on a makeshift bed in the attic.

It took the town guard less than twenty-four hours to come crashing through the front door with a warrant for his arrest.

The outrage he felt at being caught napping was nothing compared to the white fury he experienced knowing that he'd been sold out.

Fortunately, they'd apparently been under the impression that the fact that his hand was crippled meant that taking him in would be easier than smothering a baby. By the time they'd gained the presence of mind to draw their swords, he'd already hurled three men out the top window, kicked the teeth out of the sergeant, and managed to pull his pants on. After that, he'd smashed a row of oil lamps to cover his escape, and got the hell out of dodge. Three city blocks of Fletz burned, and for all appearance's sake, the lieutenant disappeared off the face of the earth.

Gehrich spent three days slinking in the alleys of Fletz trying to pick up his trail, nursing his injuries and his pride. He eventually broke into the basement of his lieutenant's old partners, and threatened to gut his wife until he got an answer. He had one arm around her throat, her back to him, with his claws dug into her belly without breaking the skin. She, for her part, stayed almost calm, her eyes lidded, her breath hitching in and out without even a squeak. Her husband did not.

When Gehrich left, he knew about a ship that had left Donau harbor the night before, and he knew where it was going.

The next day, Princess Lisa came of age, and half an hour later, Gehrich skipped town.

**0.-0.-0**


End file.
